Case Western Reserve University has announced a gift of nearly $2.3 million gift from the Ralph T. & Esther L. Warburton Foundation to establish scholarships for students in medicine, dental medicine, and nursing.

The gift will establish the Bonacker-Warburton Interprofessional Scholarship in Dental Medicine and the Lewis-Schiltz Interprofessional Scholarship in Nursing, both of which will be designated for students from Stark and Summit counties. The dental medicine scholarship is named for Herbert Bonacker and Ralph Warburton, a dentist and doctor who earned their degrees from Case Western in the same year and are the fathers of foundation trustees Phillip L. Warburton and his wife, Sally. The nursing scholarship is named for Phillip and Sally Warburton's mothers, Esther Lewis and Elisabeth Schiltz, both of whom graduated from the Mt. Sinai School of Nursing, which at the time was an affiliate of the university. The gift brings the foundation's total support for CWRU to $3 million, including a gift of $700,000 to establish the Ralph T. and Esther L. Warburton Scholarship Fund at the medical school.

The gift will help advance inter-professional education — "when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes" — at Case  and the Cleveland Clinic's new Health Education Campus.

"Health care is a team sport," said CRWU president Barbara R. Snyder. "For healthcare workers to work well together, they need to learn together. They need to take classes together, study together, eat and 'hang out' with each other."